Front Office Football Seven

The seventh installment of our signature product, Front Office Football Seven, was released on December 13, 2013. It is only available through electronic download. Please visit our web store for a link to the order page. Alternately, for the Steam version of the game, you can visit our Steam Hub. The most recent version is 7.1b, which includes the 2014 rosters and schedule. This was released on February 3, 2015.

Front Office Football is designed to represent a snapshot of professional football as it exists under the current salary cap system. You play
the role of the general manager of a team. In order to succeed in Front Office Football, you need to perform as well as possible in four different areas.

Team Performance. On the field, your primary goal is winning the coveted Front Office Bowl. Your fans, players and staff all want to see that
championship banner raised to a new position in the ring of honor surrounding your stadium.

Financial Performance. Off the field, your team needs to show a profit, or the owner will become angry and threaten your job. You need to
control salary and staff costs while balancing the need to spend money to build and upgrade your stadium against the risk of facing stagnant
ticket revenue with an aging arena.

Roster Value. You need to negotiate contracts, sign free agents, make wise decisions in the amateur draft and outsmart opposing general
managers in trade. Building a strong, capable roster means everything in Front Office Football.

Franchise Value. The bottom line is that a happy owner has a franchise that's the envy of professional football. Nothing means more to the
owners than seeing their franchise on the top of the list of most valuable franchises. You help put your team on that list by excelling in the
three other categories, but the best general managers look for opportunities to move the team in order to find a home town with a strong
economy that will support your team like none other.

Each season, Herb the Referee evaluates your performance in these four categories, and presents your grades on his chalkboard.

Front Office Football Features

The game concentrates on roster management and career play.
There are several key elements emphasized in the game design:

A realistic trading module. You can't simply take the players you want
from other teams.

Proper aging of players. Players at different positions age differently.
Quarterbacks need a couple of more years to reach their prime, but their
careers last several years longer, on average, than running backs.

The amateur draft. Teams realistically assess their needs, and build
through the draft.

Statistics. All the major stats are tracked and are available at any given time. Career and full season-by-season statistics are tracked in 135 different categories, including Red Zone and Third Down numbers. You can view and sort statistics by team, category and position. It's fast and accurate. Front Office Football also tracks and displays 182 different team statistics and league totals.

Play calling. Designed to allow quick selection of a large library of players, you can be the ultimate GM and wrest control of the play-by-play action from your coach. You can tailor your in-game strategy to your team's strengths without having to build each play from scratch.

Free agency. Teams compete with you to sign the best free agents. Each
player has his own idea of how much he wants to stay with his existing team,
and how much he wants to play for a champion. But money is still at the root
of all decisions.

Home towns. Each player will have a home town from nearly 10,000 American cities. When deciding on teams during free agency, players may prefer a team closer to home.

Depth charts. You set the depth chart at each position for your team, and
fill out a play preference chart. Front Office Football simulates games based
on these charts. You can choose different personnel depending on your choice of formations.

Game plans. The game plan will allow you to specify different strategies depending on the score of the game and how much time remains. There are literally thousands of choices to make, or you can leave everything to your coaching staff.

Player ratings. Each player is rated for 53 different skills. But you
don't have access to the raw numbers. Where's the fun in that? You hire a coaching staff, with varied strengths and weaknesses. Your coaches tell you
how good they think your players are - and how good they think your opponents'
players are.

The salary cap. It's an essential tool in keeping parity among professional
football rosters. You'll have to cut your aging, high-paid veterans just like
any ruthless general manager worth his weight in negotiations.

City profiles. Submit a plan to build a new stadium to your voters. If they turn you down, you can propose a move to any of 169 cities modeled in the game. Each city is rated for several economic criteria, which affects its desire for a new team.

Team chemistry. Players will perform better or worse in some instances, depending on how they feel about players in their group.

Dynamic Quarterback learning process. As quarterbacks learn more about the game, they will have access to more plays during games, allowing the smarter signal-callers to better confuse their opponents.

Record keeping. All team statistics are tracked for a manager's entire career. Team records, including all-time performance against every other team, are kept. A game-by-game performance breakdown is always available for individual players.

Power ratings. You can see how your team ranks using Solecismic
Software's custom power rankings. These ratings are used to set a point spread for each game.

Enhanced replay value. Every time you start a new career, the core ratings
for each player are randomly affected. For veterans, the random change will
be very small. Established stars will always be significant players. For
rookies, however, performance will vary significantly. This allows for a more
challenging game and greater replay value.

Multi-Player League Support. Choose a commissioner to run the games for your league. Your commissioner will simulate the games and process every team's instruction set for each stage during the game. Up to 32 people can compete in each multi-player league.

New Features for Front Office Football Seven

The new version of Front Office Football includes dozens of new features, designed to enhance your simulation experience. The new game features the following:

Staff Members. You now have a five-man staff, consisting of a head coach, an offensive coordinator, a defensive coordinator, an assistant coach and a strength coordinator. Staff members are responsible for scouting as well as player development. Offensive and defensive coordinators call plays. Strength coordinators help your team avoid injuries. Each staff member, aside from the strength coordinators, specializes in work with one position group.

Staff Draft. At the beginning of the year, you have the opportunity to sign any staff member who is entering the final year of his contract. After the resigning period, there's a five-round staff draft. The draft order is based on the previous year's franchise financial performance. The first round is for head coaches. You have the opportunity to skip your pick, keeping the current coach in place, or you can promote a staff member on your own team, poach an assistant from another team or select someone entirely without experience.

Staff Names. At the beginning of a new career, you have the option of using familiar coach names for your universe.

Game Film. During the season, you'll have the opportunity to view the Film Room, which contains breakdowns of every game played during the current year. Run and pass selection is broken down by down and distance and personnel packages, as are defensive play choices.

New Contract Formats. Contracts are now limited to five seasons, and incentives are gone. Rookies are automatically signed, as the new league formats make a rookie's contract structure very specific. Rookies cost less, so you'll be able to spend more money on veterans.

HTMLHelp. Front Office Football Seven uses a more modern help interface, based on HTML. This is now a native Windows 8 application, and will run on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 as well.

Draft History. All players who either played a down in the league or were drafted into the league will have a complete playing history. A new screen showing each round of every draft will give you the opportunity to quickly locate any player based solely on draft position and year.

Player File Generator. The Player File Generator allows you to take a .csv file and create a player file compatible with Front Office Football Seven.

Multi-Player FTP Support. Most mutli-player commissioner and team owner functions are now automated through FTP. As a team owner, just open up the game, select Import Game Files, and the game downloads all the most recent game files and reloads the game in the current stage. As a commissioner, imports and exports will run much more smoothly.

Multi-Player Stage Editor. The editor will allow team owners to view all the actions they've taken while constructing their current stage file. They can delete actions without having to start over.

Data Export. At any time, you can select the Export Data command, and Front Office Football Seven will generate a set of .csv files that includes player information, game information and a wealth of statistical data. While this data is in fairly raw form, enterprising spreadsheet and web site aficionados will be able to create far more impressive and extensive web sites than the game creates.

Amateur/Staff Draft Imports. Using the data from the exported .csv files, commissioners will be able to hold drafts off-line, and easily create a file that contains all the draft data. This data can then be imported directly into the game, saving the commissioner hours of making each selection by hand.

Ratings Tracking. An option allowing ratings tracking within Front Office Football Seven. Twice a season (before training camp and prior to week three of the exhibition season), a clearing-house consisting of all player ratings will be created. These can be accessed from player records, or through exported data. Player development has been changed significantly in Front Office Football Seven, so these stages are the crucial points for player development within the game.

Extensive AI Improvements: Roster building was a focus of development. Many features within the game were rebuilt, including the attendance model and player scouting.

The Quarterback Coterie: A new screen showing the yearly performance of all league quarterbacks, normalized for each season they've been in the league. This will enable you to compare quarterbacks both on career performance and by how they performed at every level of experience.

Yearly Calendar. A screen that shows the league's calendar every year. This will help players understand what stage they're in and what needs to be done at any time during the year.

Long-Snappers. The Long Snapper is now a dedicated secondary position. Each team must have one.

Internal Structural Changes. While this was the most time-consuming new feature other than replacing everything to do with scouts and coaches, it's not something you'll necessarily notice. But from a development perspective, it was necessary and very helpful. The game is much more stable and modular. New features can be added much more quickly. The game runs faster, which means some of the new AI algorithms can handle a lot more analysis. This makes future development possible as well. This is a risky development item since this and the AI upgrades took up months of development time, and they won't be immediately obvious to those who have played the game in the past. But I'm confident these developments will greatly enhance the long-term value of your gaming experience.

There's a lot that's new with Front Office Football Seven. Download the Game and please feel welcome to try it out for a short time before deciding whether to make a purchase.